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Saturday, 22 February 2014

The Room Of Magic - Writing my first Novel

If you have followed this blog with me, you will know paart of the plot and the importance of The Room Of Magic. Here is a first draft of the scene in which this room is first described. I appreciate that it needs much doing, but it is almost a matter of writing down what is in my mind, before the idea evaporates.

Bangs and flashes from Dinbar's experiments would have disturbed the inhabitants of Castle Candir if he wasn't esconced in the nether regions, deep below the castle in the ancient rooms and corridors which were built directly into the rock upon which the castle had been erected. Dinbar had been exploring these corridors for some time and had actually found the room known as the Room Of Magic. It was actually a library full of scrolls, manuscripts and ancient books; most of them had seen better days and the rest were not far behind. If the knowledge contained in the spells and incantations was to be saved, it would mean a lot of work salvaging and catalogueing the works contained in the library.

Dinbar was the Royal Magician and also friend of King Eadwyne of Mericandir, and indeed of several of his forbears before him. Which as you might infer meant that Dinbar was quite ancient himself but as he kept telling everyone, there was life in the old dog yet.

Dinbar recognised that the knowledge in this so-far secret room needed to be handled carefully, in the wrong hands it could bring disaster upon the Kingdom, he had even kept his discovery from Eadwyne, so that there was no danger of even the fact that the location was known should become accidentally revealed. Until he had it all under control, he wanted to keep it very firmly under his own hand for safety. He could recognise from the spells that many types of magik were represented here. Transmutation, Lycanthropy, transfering matter through time and space, invisibility, mind reading and thought transference were all there. It was even implied that invulnerability and raising the dead might be possible. The ancients must have been a terrible race with knowledge that had become lost in the mists of time.

It was a race against time to save as much of this knowledge as possible or at least that part of it which could not be seen as trying to copy the gods' power over man and his life on earth. The magician had investigated much of the information which was in documents which could withstand being handled, albeit very carefully. He had arranged and catalogued it as best he could and was now involved in actually trying out some of the spells; hence the flashing lights and loud noises. The working of magik was accompanied by the release of copious quantities of energies that he hardly understood. Far removed form the relatively simple forms of spell making which he indulged in. As a magician, he was a very good politician. He understood people and how to amaze and shock them with quite simple results. But even so, Dinbar was probably the only man in the country, and maybe the whole of the world of Wragrond, who could begin to understand what was happening in the Room Of Magic.